Chicago — An association planner who enlisted exhibitors in her effort to market her group's annual convention and trade show this year received a big payoff in thousands of new leads for prospective attendees.
Karen Malone, director of meeting services for the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS), devised an affinity program that involved three of nine anchor exhibitors. The exhibitors gave Malone the names and contact information of their customers in exchange for co-branding of HIMSS marketing materials and sponsorship recognition on CDs of the conference presentations. The CDs were distributed to about half of the 23,000 attendees at the convention, which was held in February at the Dallas Convention Center.
Malone expected to receive about 8,000 new names from the three exhibitors but instead got nearly 18,000.
"That really blew us away," she said.
Malone figured the names she received from the exhibitors would prove to be better prospects than the names on commercially available lists she bought every year. Her reasoning: The exhibitor-supplied prospects had a connection to HIMSS through the exhibiting companies.
"We had very little success in getting new registrants from outside lists, because they had no affinity to HIMSS," said Malone. "We thought we would have a better chance of getting our foot in the door with new prospects while at the same time making our exhibitors look good."
Since the marketing materials Malone sent to new prospects were co-branded with the names of the exhibiting companies, Malone could cement the relationship between HIMSS and the exhibitors in prospects' minds. Invitation letters from the chief executives of the exhibiting companies were also included. Malone matched each exhibitor with its customer-prospect. Prospects supplied by each company received marketing materials co-branded with that company's name.
Malone expected at least 300 new registrants from the exhibitor-supplied lists, more than double the conversion rate she was getting from commercial lists.
Unfortunately, that last part of the process, tracking the conversion rate of prospects into registrants, remained unfinished. The association's then-marketing manager, who was handling that task, departed just before the convention, Malone explained.
However, about the new leads, she added, "It had to have made a difference."
About 2,000 more people attended this year's convention than last year's, which was held in Orlando.
The increased attendance was also probably helped by a co-marketing program Malone created for all the show's 700-plus exhibitors, a program she called promo-in-a-box.
HIMSS created promotional material such as press releases and brochures, along with display advertisements, that left space for exhibitors to insert their names, logos, and brief information about their participation in the show. The material was available for download at a password-protected website in pdf and jpeg formats.
About 200 exhibitors downloaded the materials. Malone attributed the relatively low participation to limited exhibitor awareness in the program's first year. She said participation in promo-in-a-box will probably grow next year as the program becomes better known.
Malone also will continue the anchor-exhibitor affinity program next year. She plans to rotate to different anchors to receive fresh prospects. As she expects to track the prospect-to-registrant conversion rate, the anchor exhibitors will receive priority points for space on the show floor based on the number of their prospects who register for the convention.
Malone deemed the marketing programs with exhibitors a success, as evidenced in part by action on the show floor.
"It was very busy this year," said Malone. "There was great traffic, and we got incredible feedback from exhibitors. I attribute a lot of that to the outreach we did with exhibitors."
Contact Marshall Krantz at
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